- Joined
- Aug 30, 2014
- Messages
- 128
- Points
- 43
SIA is known as the scholar's graveyard. Scholars will fight tooth and nail not to be posted there for obvious reasons. An SAF Chief was transferred there as he could not control his wife. He did not go anywhere and he was posted to engineering and not the sexy part of SIA. You have to be lifer and you must go thru various disciplines before you touch leadership. You also do not have to have 2nd upper. After 5 years everything is on merit. SIA has fought NTUC and even Lim Boon Heng posted on the board did not help. Why you think the pilots and cabin crew tend to take strike actions quite regularly in the past until old man twice has to intervene.
Temasek has used SIA to start budget airlines Tiger and appointed its own leadership team with SIA having a major stake. SIA completely ignored it until it lost its licence in Australia.
MOF knows that it cannot allow scholars to handle a company that needs to compete internationally. You cannot hide or paper over the cracks when outsiders can figure out what is happening.
Not sure how long they can keep the scholars away as the PM is weak.
Philip Yeo famously turned down old man's offer to helm SIA when he threw in his resignation letter to go to HK. Why you think he did it?
I dont know this SAF scholar or his wife personally but when his nephew got married around 2 years ago I was chatting with a few people when said scholar and his wife made their entrance. Scholar seemed friendly enough and started to chat to some of the people close to where I was.
Scholar's wife however stayed away from the people he was talking to and did not appear approachable or friendly. Maybe she was used to people acknowledging her while he was in the SAF and SIA, but it didnt happen at this dinner.